"Oh, Joe, stop!" my aunt cried as the door creaked open. "What if Rachel found out? She'd never forgive me."
In the darkness under the bed, Bex looked at me, her eyes as wide and bright as the moon, as she mouthed the word, "Solomon!"
I wanted to put my hands in my ears and sing. I wanted to wish myself into another room—another galaxy—but instead I just squeezed my eyes together.
And that's probably why I didn't see the bedskirt fly up and two hands grab my ankles.
My back skidded on the hardwood floors as a great force jerked me from my hiding place.
My aunt stared down and said, "Hey, squirt."
The good news was that Mr. Solomon was nowhere to be found. The bad news was that my aunt had had absolutely no trouble finding us.
"Bex, darling, could you give us a minute?" Bex looked at me. One of the cardinal rules of being a Gallagher Girl was simple: never leave your sister behind. But this was different, and we both knew it.
"See you upstairs," I said as she walked away. The door closed behind her, and Abby turned to me. "You really have grown up."
"Aunt Abby," I hurried with the words, "I'm—" I had intended to say "sorry" but Abby finished for me. "Busted."
She dropped onto the bed and pulled off a black (standard Secret Service-issue) loafer that was covered with mud. I looked around the room. "Uh… where's Mr. Solomon?"
"Heck if I know." Abby shrugged. She must have read my confused expression because then she added, "Oh, Joe," mimicking her earlier tone. She laughed. "Squirt, you should have seen the look on your face."
"Was I that obvious?" I asked.
"Oh, no way," Abby said, and as crazy as it might sound, I felt a little proud. "But the bed thing is kind of a Morgan family tradition."
"Why? Did my mom—"
"Oh, not your mom." Abby stopped me. She cocked an eyebrow. "Your dad."
Your dad, she'd said. She'd just…volunteered it. My father was always with my mother and me, and yet neither of us ever said his name. I realized then that Dad was like a ghost that only Aunt Abby didn't fear. She walked to the dresser and pulled out a bag of M&M's.
"Want one?" she asked, offering me the bag. For a second I thought about the first time I'd met Zach, but the thought quickly vanished.
"Gosh, your dad loved sweets!" she exclaimed as she sank onto the bed. "You get that from him, you know. I remember this one time, we were trailing this double agent through a bazaar in Athens, and there was this lady selling chocolates. And they looked so good. And I could see your dad, and it was all he could do to keep his eye on the subject. But your dad was a pavement artist—you know that, right? So he's following this guy, while I'm up on this second-story balcony getting the whole thing on surveillance and routing it back to Langley. And your dad's a pro, but I could tell that he wanted something sweet so bad he could hardly stand it. The only problem was…"
I watched my aunt carry on. There was a light in her eyes, an easiness to her words that I don't think I'd ever heard before. It was just another funny story, an entertaining tale. I mean, sure it was classified and dangerous and she might have been violating about a dozen CIA bylaws by telling me, but still she talked, and I listened.
"Here's the thing you've got to know," she said as she leaned closer. "Everything's so crowded that if you blinked at the wrong time you could lose someone, so it's a tough tail, you know? And I'm up on this balcony, but housekeeping wants to come in and clean the room. This maid is yelling, and I'm calling back, and I look away for—I don't know— two seconds. Seriously. No way was it longer than that. And when I look back, your dad's got chocolate on one side of his face and he's smiling at me."
Abby threw her head back, and a part of me wanted to laugh alongside her. I tried to imagine my father alive and half a world away. But the other part of me wanted to cry.
"To this day I don't know how he did it. I went back and looked at the tapes, too." She wiped her hands together as if shaking off the dust of some old mystery she'd given up on solving. "Not a sign of it." Then she looked at me anew. "He was that good."
She pushed herself back onto the bed and told me, "You're that good." The way she looked at me said she
wasn't speaking as an aunt, she was speaking as a spy.
But I didn't want to be compared to my father in that place. In that way. I didn't deserve it, so I said, "I'm not."
"Yeah, maybe you aren't," Abby said, and despite my protest, a wave of hurt ran through me. But then she cocked an eyebrow. "But you will be."
A new feeling coursed through me—relief. I felt…like a girl. Like I didn't know all the answers and that was okay because I still had time to learn them.
"So you're not going to tell my mom?"
"Why?" Abby looked at me. "So she can get mad at both of us?"
It seemed like a fair point until I realized…
"But why would she get mad at you?"
"For showing you this." The sound of a heavy notebook dropping onto her wooden dresser caught me off guard. Sheets of paper almost seemed to whistle as she thumbed through the pages.
"The threat book," my aunt told me as I looked at the book. The covers could barely contain it. "This is just this month. This is just Macey—not even counting the rest of the McHenry family," She thumbed through the pages, but I didn't dare to read the words. "We keep copies of every letter, every e-mail, every 911 call and crazy floral delivery card. We keep track of everything, Cam, and analyze it and study it and do what it is we do."